By: Patrick Fontana, Emeric Aelters and Pierre-Yves Fave

One of the meanings of the German word grenze is the limit as a border separating two areas, which by definition can be crossed. GRENZE is a series of visual readings based on Capital by Karl Marx (part 1). GRENZE opens up a series of reflections around capital as Marx analysed it, in an attempt to better understand it in its present form.

GRENZE is a vision of the metamorphoses of the capitalist system. It is a visual translation of « Capital ». It progressively unfolds a chain of metamorphic movements. Faced with the construction of an infernal and destructive mechanism, we respond with our look, our waiting, time.

(The capitalist system is incompatible with any rational improvement).
GRENZE consists of sequences called ARTIFICIAL UNITS OF DEVELOPMENT (AUD) that correspond to drawn notes made during my readings of Capital. For each AUD there is a corresponding fragment of the text by Karl Marx. Some of the AUD are 2D animations, image by image - called idiotic motions, whereas others reproduce more complex real and metamorphic movements created with a 3D software.
In Capital, Marx often uses the words: shapes, motions, mechanisms, divisions, new circumstances, organic limits, transformations, revolution. He describes the worker as a very imperfect agent in the production of a continuous movement. The French translations of Capital are written in a very polished, always very vivid and abstract style, even conceptual. I have thus developed a series of figures and forms to respond to this language. In GRENZE, capital is represented by a cube called cube-capital that is in perpetual transformation. The larva represents commodities, whereas the workers are represented by a triangle, the workers-figure, which transforms as they grow poorer.